Financial data management applications are widely used to record, maintain, track, and utilize various types of personal or business financial data. Such financial data management applications include Quicken® by Intuit Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. These financial data management applications enable users to track cash flow, investments, property and debt by maintaining records of various transactions in various accounts, such as spending or checking accounts, savings accounts, credit accounts, brokerage or securities accounts, retirement accounts, asset accounts, and liability accounts, and the like.
One of the highest barriers for tracking investments in conventional financial data management applications is the necessity for chronologically entering historical transactions information in order to reap the benefits of tracking the performance and tax implications of investments. Tracking the performance and tax implications of investments requires entering the complete history of past transactions that led to the current holdings in an investment account. In order to track the performance and tax implications of investments in conventional financial data management applications, the user is asked to enter the complete history of past transactions up-front when the user sets up the investment account in the financial data management application. If the user enters only current securities holdings information without entering the historical transactions that led to the current holdings, in many cases the software makes certain assumptions that make it difficult to enter past transactions information later on to track the performance and tax implications of investments in conventional financial data management applications. In some cases, the software does not permit later entry of the past transactions, so users cannot change their minds and provide more historical data as they have more time to enter them or as they realize the benefits that more complete data would bring to them.
Therefore, there is a need for a method to initially enter just the holdings information for an account in a financial data management application and to later enter, or “backfill” the past transactions information for the current holdings later on. There is also a need for a method to allow users to begin to obtain the benefits of tracking investments in the financial data management application without a great deal of up-front work, and to get increased benefits from the financial data management application as they enter more past transactions information.